National News

Bronx Gunman Shot His Friend, Didn't Spill His Drink

The most shocking part of the security camera video is not where the gunman in a red polo shirt and green baseball cap empties his silver automatic pistol into his supposed friend.

Nor is it where the gunman then viciously pistol whips his victim repeatedly for having the temerity not to die.

Nor is it the way the gunman manages not to spill a drop of the drink in his other hand as he commits all this savagery.

The worst of it comes after the gunman delivers a final blow and departs this small grocery store on Webster Avenue in the Bronx.

One by one, five other men calmly step over the wounded man with horrifying indifference, evidencing no concern at all except maybe not stepping in the blood.

The third of the five men does pause for a moment as the victim struggles to rise despite wounds to his head, chest, and both legs.

The victim then collapses and the third man just steps past him, as did the two men before, as do the two who come afterward.

Fifty years ago, the whole nation was shocked by reports that dozens of neighbors had done nothing on hearing the screams of Kitty Genovese as she was stabbed to death near her home in Queens.

The Bronx security camera video from early Saturday is in some ways more disturbing than that infamous, long ago failure of strangers to act.

The owner of the grocery reports that everyone involved in this new horror—the gunman, the victim, and the five others—know each other.

“They are all friends,” the owner, Ali Abdulla, told The Daily Beast on Monday. “They spend all day being together.”

He could not immediately explain how friends could suddenly behave this way.

“Overnight hate,” he said.

He is originally from Yemen, and he added, “It does not just happen in the Middle East,”

Abdulla has been running the store for 23 years. He was at McDonald’s early Saturday, getting dinner for his two late-night workers, when one of them called to say there had been a shooting. He hurried back and learned that a group of young men had come in after filming a rap video out on Webster Avenue.

The young men had been drinking, and an argument erupted over who was better schooled in rap music. The dispute had quickly escalated from spitting to deafening gunfire as the workers looked on in terror.

No thanks to his supposed friends, the 37-year-old victim is expected to live. The store was open for business Monday, the security camera that captured the disturbing images just inside the front door, the linoleum floor scarred in at least three places by bullets.

“You have empty boxes?” a woman asked.

“Empty boxes, come back at 6 or 7,” the clerk behind the counter said.

The victim’s brother entered the store wearing a dark-blue shirt, gray shorts, and sunglasses, his hair in braids. He had good reason to believe that this was one place the gunman would not be found. He said nothing as he exited soon after.

The owner, Abdulla, stood outside, speaking about the local men of the street and sounding like a voice from the bad old days, before New York became the safest big city in America.